2013 SRT Viper: Speed demon with too much engine

DanNeil

Dan Neil/The Wall Street Journal

As fast and ornery as the V10-powered beast is, the 20132 Dodge SRT Viper would be better with a V8, says Dan Neil.

Rumors of the new Viper’s livability are wildly exaggerated. While the fifth generation of Chrysler Group LLC’s V10-powered, front-engine roadster/coupe is much improved, rest assured America’s supercar remains a huge pain in the seat heaters. It’s still a devil’s deal of design trade-offs—the agricultural gearshift linkage, side exhaust pipes that scald your leg when you step out, acute cabin claustrophobia, lousy outward views—all in the service of this thing, this joyous, hurts-so-good masochism of the Viper experience, which is strangely like a question-your-sanity experience.

Example: At about 70 miles per hour, cruising down the highway with the Tremec six-speed gearbox in overdrive, my 2013 SRT Viper GTS Coupe’s cabin thrummed in the perfect musical note of F, so that any song played on the audio system that wasn’t in the key of F sounded horrible. How many times can you listen to Elton John’s “Levon”? What I’m saying is that if you drive around in your Viper with your own superhero theme music playing in your head, it had better be in F.

So, Viper owners, come on, what gives? Didn’t mama love you? What could possess you to go around leading, as it were, your own one-car parade, to so disorder the public peace, to sport such an obvious automotive codpiece? If automobiles are costumes, Viper owners are attending life’s masquerade dressed as randy jesters.

In a moment I’m going to tell you more about how fun it is to nail the throttle in third gear in a Viper pointed down a racetrack—very, extremely, with a hellish, slobbering exhaust note—but for now, a question: Why? Why does the Viper exist?

Born in 1989 as a concept car at the Detroit auto show, the Viper was Bob Lutz’s idea. In those languishing days, Lutz, then Chrysler’s president, imagined the Viper as a modern Shelby Cobra, the bratty racing roadster of ‘60s glory days. It was to be an image builder for Chrysler, then in full dreariness, and a badly needed morale boost for employees. It wasn’t necessarily for-profit, but neither could the Viper team blow a lot of development cash.

Since Chrysler wasn’t making a suitable big-block V8 at the time, Lutz suggested using a reworked version of the firm’s great honking 8-liter V10 truck-based engine, used in medium-duty pickups—and, I think, drug-running submarines and scary Russian carnival rides and other malign machinery.

Since Chrysler wasn’t making a suitable big-block V8 at the time, Lutz suggested using a reworked version of the firm’s great honking 8-liter V10 truck-based engine, used in medium-duty pickups—and, I think, drug-running submarines and scary Russian carnival rides and other malign machinery.

The V10 decision, made in the spirit of frugal expedience more than two decades ago, was the fateful moment. From then to now, the character of this car—its sound, its weird, off-center cockpit ergonomics, its endless hood—has been dominated by the piston-chucking, tire-fogging pushrod V10. I call it Rambo.

Flash forward to Aug. 22, 2010, in the dark days after the bankruptcy, bailout and Fiat alliance. With an impassioned plea to “save an icon,” Ralph Gilles, Chrysler Group LLC senior vice president in charge of product design and, at the time, president and CEO of Dodge, persuaded Fiat
US:FIATYIT:F
and Chrysler chief Sergio Marchionne to approve the fifth-generation Viper program, but only on the condition that Viper be a positive business case. That was a shame, since losing a boatload of money in the low-volume supercar business is much easier.

This was another fateful moment. The time to bring Viper into the modern era of supercars—with a much lighter, more compact and more emissions-favorable powerplant—was the Gen V overhaul, the flagship of the new SRT brand (Street & Racing Technology). But just as in 1989, there was simply no scratch for that, and Team Viper was obliged to go with the mega-motor it had.

This was the moment when Viper became a plaster saint, an icon too venerable for its own good, a purveyor of nostalgia engineering. The result: The new Viper is, and drives like, a highly modernized, insanely fast and powerful relic.

It wasn’t easy dragging the Viper into modernity. In fact, while Gilles—43 years old, TV-handsome—gets the credit for saving Viper, I would like to salute Dick Winkles, the engineer responsible for getting the boat-anchor V10 past federal emissions standards. As told in Maurice Liang’s excellent book “SRT Viper: America’s Supercar Returns,” the Gen IV’s onboard diagnostics couldn’t detect all misfires throughout the RPM range (because a single cylinder misfire in a 10-cylinder engine with its 90-pound crank spinning away at thousands of rpm is a very subtle event). The feds said to come back when the car was “100% compliant.” Uh-oh.

Not only did Winkles—can a brother get a hashtag?—get the hulking pushrodder past the feds, he and his team squeezed an additional 40 horsepower and 40 pound-feet of torque out of it, while cutting engine weight (aluminum flywheel, composite intake runners and incremental light-weighting of valve-train and other assemblies). The lighter flywheel adds a new goose-iness to Viper’s throttle response and makes it that much more steerable with the gas pedal. The Viper’s six-speed manual gearbox has been smoothed over quite a bit—yet remains capable of balking—and the clutch-pedal throw is long but comfortably weighted. Heel-and-toe position is excellent, in part because the V10 engine crowds the pedals.

Look, I’m not saying the new Viper isn’t stupendously quick and fast. It will freak you out faster than getting a text from Anthony Weiner. The big, bellowing, on-the-cam torque (600 pound-feet at 5,000 rpm) hits you between the shoulder blades like a bag of wet cement. Zero to 60 mph (with launch control activated) comes in under 3.5 seconds, and in some time less than 8 seconds, the Viper crosses the 100-mph mark. This is a car that effortlessly and serenely generates 1-g-plus cornering. The Viper absolutely loves the new Pirelli PZero (or optional Corsa) tires, foot-wide monster meats with a lovely, progressive feel as they finally start to give up grip. The steering is heavy and satisfyingly darty (2.5 turns, lock-to-lock).

To drive the new Viper in anger is to experience that old, familiar atavistic thrill, like running down and eating a deer.

The new Viper is quite a bit more manageable cornering at high-g’s, with much less skittering of the front tires, neutral-throttle, corner entry.

And I’m not saying the new Gen V Viper isn’t a vastly better car. Chief among the improvements is the handsomely sculptured stitched-leather interior, with a modern TFT display replacing the old, wretched one. On my scorecard, the second major improvement is a beautifully cast aluminum X-brace suspended across the engine bay that, to no one’s surprise, helps improve the rigidity of the steel space-frame by 50%. And this isn’t some vague claim of improvement in an obscure metric; it makes a real, palpable difference in on-track drivability. The new Viper is quite a bit more manageable cornering at high-g’s, with much less skittering of the front tires, neutral-throttle, corner entry.

Because stability control is now federally mandated on all cars, the Viper chassis team spent a lot of time tuning the system to provide only the most minimal and transparent intervention, with multiple modes, including the all-important off switch.

However, what I am saying is that every good thing about the new Viper could be that much better with a different engine. As a product, and as a driving experience, the Viper remains true to its origins, a unique mix of passion and program cost-containment.

Carbon-fiber body panels, adjustable Bilsteins coil-overs, the works. You can even have your snake prepared in two ways: the minimalistic SRT Viper ($99,995) or the luxed-up Viper GTS ($120,395) with the Pirelli summer tires and assorted creature comforts. Alas, with fuel economy of 12/19 mpg, city/highway, Viper is subject to a $2,600 federal gas-guzzler tax.

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